Down The Rabbit Hole
by Snow'sLuckyCat
Summary: What happens when Patrick Jane finally catches up to Red John? It's NOT what you think... Mild spoilers for 1.23 and 2.08. Jane Whump.


**Title:** Down The Rabbit Hole  
**Author: **Snow'sLuckyCat (aka Sharma aka jsl aka me)  
**Fandom:** _The Mentalist  
_**Categories:** Hurt/Comfort / Drama  
**Rated: **T (for whump & brief disturbing imagery)  
**Characters: **Patrick Jane, Teresa Lisbon, & Red John (plus a bit of the team)...  
**P.O.V.:** First person, dual (from behind both Jane's & Lisbon's eyes).  
**Timeline:** Set sometime in the future (even after the upcoming season 2 finale).  
**Spoilers:** Mentions of 1.23 - "Red John's Footsteps" & 2.08 - "His Red Right Hand."  
**Summary:** Red John viciously ambushes Jane, leaving Patrick's life hanging in the balance...

**Disclaimer: **I only WISH I owned Simon Baker and the rest of the awesome actor and actress clan from  
_The Mentalist_. In truth though, Bruno Heller (the creator) and CBS (the station the show airs on) are the  
owners. Please don't sue at any rate, for I make absolutely NO money off this, and so am just writing  
and experimenting with these characters of yours for FUN... :)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I let you go, and you're as a good as dead."

"Well, what are you waiting for then! Isn't that what you've wanted all along?!?"

A peal of thunder and streak of lightning briefly highlights the face of the man that killed my  
family standing over me. A shock of shaggy red hair and sharp blue eyes pierces me and  
pierces the dark clearing around us.

"You know? I always thought it would be different this this. You've completed me for so long,  
that this ending seems a bit...anti-climatic."

His tight grip on my hand slips a little. On purpose?

"Not only that, this was _**not **_what _**I **_wanted to happen. What I wanted was to see you _**suffer**_.  
You can't suffer if you're dead...Or _can _you, Mr. Jane?"

His grip slips even more. And then, just as suddenly, there's nothing left holding me from falling  
down into the dark hole in the ground. I scrabble at the sides of the well, trying to slow my descent  
into darkness. But, there's nothing but smooth rock. And then, just as suddenly as my descent begins,  
it abruptly ends, atop a ledge of moldy, moss-covered wooden boards. It's like a secondary cover for  
the abandoned well. And if it weren't all so mossy, I would kiss the wood.

As is, my head hurts, as does my right arm, and my ears are ringing, but I think it's nothing too serious.

I look up, see Red John still hovering at the well rim like a spectre, and wonder if he can still see me.

My answer comes scant seconds later.

"Well, Mr. Jane. Luck seems to honor you these days. Must be because of all those good deeds you've  
done. Catching people like me and putting them into jails...or the ground...like you did to my young  
Sheriff friend, Hardy, and I did to your work nemesis, Sam Bosco. How ironic it is that _**I **_am the one  
putting _**you **_into the ground now."

The figure vanishes, comes back, holding something big, something I can't quite make out in the half-light.

"Good-**_bye_**, Mr. Jane."

And he unceremoniously drops whatever it is from his outstretched arms and hands.

It hits the boards in front of my face with an ominous thud, before crashing on through them.

It swipes through the farthest ends of all the boards I'm lying on. And forward and down I slide,  
towards the edge, as the board angles increase like a gangplank. I try to turn around, fall feet-first,  
hang on, but my deadened right arm won't cooperate.

As I hit the edge, the remaining planks fall apart underneath my weight.

Ten seconds later, my back hits the dry bottom, forcefully driving the breath from my lungs. Then,  
the back of my head partially bounces off the hard-packed dirt and the adjoining stone wall. And  
my vision completely darkens when this additional pain overtakes me.

A dull thumping presently register in my ears.

The broken bits from the platform are landing around and on top of me.

Finally, all is quiet.

There's a heavy pressure on my chest, and it won't leave. I try to shift it, even just a little, by squirming.

But, the moment I move anything, wildfire splashes up and down my entire body. And I can't help  
but illicit a low groan. Even though my muddled brain screams at my body that it's foolish to try,  
I try to move again anyway. A sharp spike of pain shoots from the back of my skull and up and  
out through my right eye, finally ushering me into the sweetness of painless oblivion.

XXXXXX

_**No backup. **_

I have no backup.

When I saw Red John dangling my friend over the old well, I wanted to kill him. I now knew just  
why and how Patrick felt when it came to Red John. I'd lost Sam, a man I had at one time deeply  
cared about, to a maniac that this maniac had recruited. Now, I was about to lose another friend,  
to the machinations of the original maniac himself.

I'm rooted to my hiding place, however.

Over the sounds of thunder and downpour, I hear bits of the conversation between the two men.

Then, just as quickly, the conversation dies, and he's gone. My friend is gone, dropped down  
into a bottomless pit, by a madman.

And the rage that's been building up within me explodes. And I run towards the man  
with the scraggly red hair and the sick gleam in his eye, gun drawn and ready to take  
my revenge, for Sam, and for Jane...

XXXXXX

**_I am wet._**

That's the first thing I realize upon coming to.

Far, far above me, directly overhead, I can just make out the full moon.

That's the first thing I see.

The view is fairly unobstructed.

No longer does a figure ring the edge of the hole above.

The weight on my chest hasn't gone away either though. I tilt my head towards it.

Dimly, I realize that it's a body. A familiar body. That of my friend.

But, then, Teresa Lisbon opens her eyes, sits up, and smiles happily down at me.

"You're alive. And that's all that matters."

XXXXXX

**_I'm warm and dry._**

Everything's pleasantly numb.

I'm moving too. Getting wheeled somewhere.

Lights blur my vision.

Soft noises eventually coalesce into familiar voices.

"Will he be all right?"

A woman's light feminine tone.

_Grace?_

"I dunno. He took quite a knock to his head."

A harder-edged, slightly older woman's speech?

_Lisbon? _

"He looks knocked around in general."

_Rigsby?_

"Well, _you_ try getting dropped into a great big hole, shortly followed  
by almost getting suffocated, then half-drowned."

_Cho?_

"Red...?" I murmur, surprising them all with my semi-cognizant consciousness.

Lisbon is the one that answers me, already knowing what I'm trying and  
failing to ask. "Dead. I shot him and he fell down the well. Sorry about that."

I know she's not really sorry. I don't mind that though. Not anymore.

"You m'okay?" I ask next, syllables slurred together.

I open eyes that I hadn't realized had shut, and give a floating Lisbon  
a sharp, pointed look. Or as sharp as I can make it while lethargic and  
also very possibly drugged up to the gills.

"I wasn't the one that wound up at the bottom of a deep hole in the  
ground," she chastises gently.

Her accompanying smile is tentative, but it's there, and I smile back,  
relieved and still loopy.

"They're loading you into an ambulance, Jane. You're going to be just fine."

She backs off, but I catch her hand with mine, and pull her back,  
down close to my face, so I can whisper. I have only enough  
breath to say "Thank you..." before I start coughing up water.

She looks nervously affronted by my declaration, but nods, accepting it.

And then an oxygen mask passed on from someone else descends  
over my nose and mouth. And I can breathe a little easier, and let  
myself truly relax for the first time in just over seven years...

XXXXXX

"So, what happened _after _the you-know?"

It's two weeks later. Red John's body is still in the morgue, just waiting to be autopsied.  
And I am the "proud" owner of a sling for my right arm and bandages for my head and left  
hand and for around my three fractured ribs.

Both Teresa and I are sitting on my leather couch, waiting for the rest of the team to get  
back from checking out a lead for our newest case.

"I shot him, he fell in, I came down, got you out, called the medics, and here we sit,"  
she explains, matter-of-factly

"That's the short story..." I complain. "It doesn't help that I've heard it before too."

"We almost lost you, and I don't want to relive that experience anytime soon, Jane."

I start to protest further, but then I see the steel in her eyes, and know it would be  
ridiculous to argue about things having to do with Red John at any point in the near  
future. He _is _dead, after all. There's no sense of closure for me though, not yet, anyway.  
And I can't help but wonder if that's because I wasn't the one with the gun.

Instead, I was the one that went down the rabbit hole and simply came back up before  
it was too late...all thanks to Lisbon's quick thinking.

XXXX  
**END  
**XXXX

Please review! :D This is only my second completed Mentalist fic, and I would absolutely  
love to hear what any of you wonderful guys and dolls think about it. :)


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